Aloconota gregaria

This was one of four different Aleocharine beetles that came to light together in an arable field. I'd spent a long time unsuccessfully keying the first two before realising by the third that it was far quicker to compare their spermatheca with the diagrams in the new Duff book. This one was a male though, and I wasn't sure that approach was going to be so easy. So first I thought I'd see if a Google image search of the beetle might thrown up any clues. One of the best matches was a species of Aloconota, so I had a look to see which the commonest species of Aloconota in Norfolk were, and found that gregaria was by far the commonest so checked that first. Surprisingly (as image searching rove beetles has rarely proved very successful when I've tried it before) the aedeagus was an exact match for mine. None of the other similar species appeared to be a good match and the description matched my specimen well. Note that whilst the live photos (taken with flash) appear to show the elytra are brown, the dried dead specimen under the microscope has almost black elytra. I can just see a hint of brown but nowhere near as clear as it looks in the live photos.

male Aloconota gregaria showing head (from above, front and side), head and pronotum, elytra, tergites, sternites, aedeagus (with parameres and 4 orientations) last visible tergite with internal sternite/tergite? and reverse of internal sternite/tergite?, Wendling Beck Environment Project (Norfolk, UK), 18th August 2024